ResCon1

Who is Failing Ukraine: Biden or Congressional Republicans?

Who is Failing Ukraine: Biden or Congressional Republicans?

By John R Guardiano on January 8, 2024

The media blame Congressional Republicans for failing to support Ukraine; but the real failure of support lies in the Oval Office with Joe Biden.

The media and most foreign policy analysts would have you believe that farsighted Joe Biden supports Ukraine, while myopic Congressional Republicans don’t; and that a lack of GOP support is why Ukraine enters this, its third year of war, on the defensive, facing a Russian military onslaught.

In fact, the opposite is true. Joe Biden says he supports Ukraine; yet he has deliberately withheld from Ukraine critical weapon systems such as the ATACMS or long-range Army Tactical Missile System.

He has been seriously tardy and parsimonious about the weapon systems he has provided (e.g., a few dozen Abrams tanks and just 20 ATACMS), while imposing range and use restrictions on other provided weapon systems (e.g., the HIMARS or High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems).

As Biden himself publicly acknowledged Nov. 9, 2022: “There’s a lot of things [i.e., weapon systems] that Ukraine wants that we didn’t do” or provide.

Consequently, as Phillips P. O’Brien observes, “while Russia can strike anywhere in Ukraine, the U.S. has denied the Ukrainians the weapons they need to hit Russian targets, even in the parts of Ukraine that Russia occupies.”

Biden’s dithering and delay has been quite costly. It has given Russia the time and space that it needed to massively mine occupied Ukraine and to erect massive defensive fortifications, which the Ukrainians simply have not been able to overcome, especially given their lack of Western and American aircraft.

The President, of course, has his reasons, or excuses, for practicing self-deterrence. He says he wants to avoid a wider war, “escalation” and “World War III.” But whatever the reason or excuse, the bottom line is still the same: The West has given Ukraine enough to survive, but not enough to win.

For the most part, Biden’s center-left supporters have implored him to speed up the delivery of weapon systems to Ukraine while they refrain from criticizing him directly. Instead, they aim their rhetorical fire at Congressional Republicans for not supporting Biden’s most recent Ukrainian aid request.

As David Frum argues, “A ‘yes’ on both Ukraine and the border is still within reach, if only pro-Ukraine Republicans will press their colleagues to grasp it.”

Congressional Republican Politics. There is some truth to Frum’s argument. Some Congressional Republicans are, indeed, opposed to aiding Ukraine, while other GOPers are playing politics and trying to use Ukraine aid to score political points against Biden.

But the more important and consequential issue which Frum and other center-left Biden supporters ignore, is that most Congressional Republicans are fed up with Biden’s weak, timid and half-hearted approach to aiding Ukraine.

Congressional Republicans don’t want another “forever war”; they want a clear and decisive Ukrainian win. Yet Biden has never laid out a strategy for ensuring that Ukraine wins and Russia loses. Instead, he repeats his vague mantra about “standing by Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

But this begs the question: as long as it takes to achieve what, exactly? Win? Lose? Tie? Negotiate? Biden never says.

Biden’s Timidity. Occasionally, the president will tip his hand. During a June 13, 2023, Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Biden said explicitly that aid to Ukraine is designed to achieve not a military victory for Ukraine, but a negotiated settlement instead.

“It’s still early days,” he told reporters, “but what we do know is that the more land that Ukrainians are able to liberate, the stronger hand they will have at the negotiating table.”

In other words, Biden isn’t playing for a Ukrainian win; he’s playing for a tie and a negotiated settlement that will force Ukraine to cede large amounts of its territory and millions of its people to the tender mercies of Putin’s Russia.

As O’Brien frankly acknowledges, “The Biden administration doesn’t want Ukraine to win.”

Most Congressional Republicans, however, do want Ukraine to win, and this explains their frustration with Biden and their reluctance to support additional aid request for Ukraine.

“Absolutely, we have to stop Putin,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida) told Fox News’ Mark Levin Dec. 11, 2023. But “it’s our job to say ‘to what end?’ What’s the strategy? How are you going to get there?’—and also to question what he [Biden] has done so far.”

“We are in a stalemate that will be very long and very expensive,” Waltz adds.

“I’d say from the very beginning, they’ve [the Biden administration] been engaging in half-measures while Ukraine has been half-succeeding,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) Feb. 16, 2023.

“That has been a pattern with this administration from the beginning,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) Feb. 26, 2023.

They have slow-rolled critical military weapon systems… [and] it’s a long list. It’s Patriots, it’s HIMARS; it’s tanks; and now it’s F-16’s. And to me, that is a real blunder.

We need to get them what they need now and listen to the Ukrainians… They’ve proven their ability to fight bravely, and I think we need to do a much better job.

It took nine months to get them the Patriots…

In short, Biden says he supports Ukraine but fails to follow through with specific policies that would make that rhetorical support real and tangible. Most Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, support Ukraine but have grown weary of a president who refuses to commit to victory.

As Frum rightly notes, “If leadership was ever needed, it’s needed now.” But that leadership has to come from the President, the Commander in Chief. It cannot come from Congress.

Featured photo credit: President Joe Biden (L) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) (R), courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon (Getty Images). Biden and Cotton represent polar opposite approaches to Ukraine. Biden, the Democrat, wants a tie and a negotiated settlement. Cotton, the Republican, wants a Ukrainian win and a Russia defeat.

Israel Should Ignore Recent American Military Counsel Re: Gaza and Hamas

Israel Should Ignore Recent American Military Counsel Re: Gaza and Hamas

By John R Guardiano on November 11, 2023

U.S. military leaders are projecting their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan onto Israel in Gaza. But these are dissimilar conflicts with fundamentally different objectives.

What can Israel learn from the recent American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Much less than U.S. military leaders seem to think.

For example, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., told reporters recently that the complete destruction of Hamas is “a pretty large order.”

According to The Times of Israel, Brown said he worries that too many civilian Palestinian deaths might radicalize the Palestinian population and thereby create more terrorists.

“That’s something we have to pay attention to,” he said.

That’s why when we talk about time—the faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas.

This counsel of caution is bad and inapt military advice. The General is mistakenly projecting the recent American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan onto Israel in Gaza today. But this truly is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military was waging a counterinsurgency campaign designed to legitimize, in the eyes of the populace, new and indigenous national and regional governments.

For this reason, creating more terrorists through excessive civilian deaths and excessive collateral damage was a legitimate concern.

Israel, however, is not waging a counterinsurgency campaign; it is waging a war to destroy Hamas. And the Palestinian population in Gaza already is radicalized.

“Children are marinated from birth in Jew hatred,” notes Andrew McCarthy. “Hamas,” he writes, “was elected by Palestinians because it wants to destroy Israel and murder” Jews.

Moreover, as recent videos from Gaza show, although the Palestinians in Gaza are radicalized and filled with genocidal hatred of the Jews, many Palestinians nonetheless seem to understand that Hamas is corrupt and living high off the hog while they suffer from Hamas-induced war and material deprivation.

Military Objective. This doesn’t mean that Israel should simply destroy Gaza. That would be wrong and immoral, and it would breed righteous diplomatic isolation of the Jewish State. Too many civilians would needlessly die as a result.

Simply destroying Gaza, of course, is not what Israel is doing. Instead, Israel is destroying Hamas, while going to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage.

Gen. Brown to the contrary notwithstanding, destroying Hamas is a fully achievable military objective. Israel can destroy Hamas as a military force. It can destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure, capability, and wherewithal.

Hamas, obviously, may continue to exist as a political and ideological movement. That is much harder to extinguish. Destroying Hamas, politically and ideologically, is well beyond the purview and capability of the Israeli Defense Forces. But destroying Hamas as a military force is hardily a fanciful or farfetched objective.

As for who rules Gaza after Hamas, that really is not Israel’s concern. Unlike the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel is not trying to establish a civilian government in Gaza: it simply is trying to eliminate a military threat there.

The post-Hamas civilian government will be established and administered by someone else, some other regional or international body—the Palestinian Authority, perhaps; maybe the Arab League; possibly the United Nations.

Israel, meanwhile, will be at the ready, fully prepared to eliminate any nascent military capability or threat that might again emerge in Gaza in the future.

‘Mowing the Lawn’. This is different from Israel’s previous approach to Gaza, which was to permit or allow establishment of a Hamas military base there while periodically brushing it back through military strikes. This was known as “mowing the lawn.”

Israel no longer will “mow the lawn.” Israel now will stop the lawn from ever being planted, even as many Palestinians in Gaza remain eager to grow new grass.

General Colin Powell famously said, “You break it; you own it.” That may have been true of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is not true of Gaza. Gaza was badly broken before Israel invaded.

In fact, Israel invaded Gaza to fix it. Fixing Gaza, as far as Israel is concerned, means eliminating its military infrastructure, capability, and wherewithal, nothing more and nothing less.

The bottom line: Israel knows what it is doing, and what it is doing bears little resemblance to what the United States set out to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Israelis seem to understand this. The United States should, too.

Feature photo credit: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., courtesy of Task & Purpose (Eric Dietrich/U.S. Air Force).

Ukraine, Israel, and the National Security Myopia of Populist Republicans

Ukraine, Israel, and the National Security Myopia of Populist Republicans

By John R Guardiano on October 22, 2023

Both Ukraine and Israel are key American allies who need and deserve U.S. military aid—now.

The inconsistency is head spinning. Populist “New Right” Republicans have rushed forward to voice their support for Israel after that country came under attack by Hamas, an Iranian proxy force based in Gaza.

Yet, with a straight face, these same populist Republicans say we must stop funding Ukraine.

Israel. v. Ukraine. Israel, you see, is an historic and democratic ally; but Ukraine is a corrupt country that, historically, has never been considered an American ally.

Israel is waging war against Hamas, a ragtag terrorist group with little real military capability. Ukraine, by contrast, is fighting Russia, a nuclear power that could well ignite “World War III.”

Continued military aid to Ukraine, moreover, would mean short-changing Israel of critical weapons systems and munitions, which are in short supply, and which, therefore, must not be diverted to Ukraine.

So argue the populist “New Right” Republicans.

Biden Funding Request. The issue has come to a head because President Biden Thursday gave an Oval Office address calling for $61.4 billion in new funding for Ukraine, $14.3 billion in new funding for Israel, and $7.4 billion in new funding for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.

Populist “New Right” Republicans have criticized Biden for lumping these funding requests together.

They want separate funding bills for all three countries or theaters of operation, but especially Ukraine, and the reason why is not hard to discern: They want to fund Israel and defund Ukraine.

This is wrongheaded, dangerous, and myopic.

The truth is that both Ukraine and Israel are key American allies who need and deserve U.S. military support—now. Both countries are being savagely and barbarically attacked by an axis of aligned countries that threaten vital U.S. national security interests.

Russia wants to drive the United States out of Europe, subsume Ukraine and the Baltic States, and bring Eastern Europe back under its heel.

Iran, meanwhile, wants to drive the United States out of the Middle East, destroy Israel, and become the region’s dominant, hegemonic power.

Russian and Iran are both opposed to the American-led, rules-based international order.

Iran uses Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad, and other proxy forces to wage war against Israel, America, and the West.

Russia uses the Wagner Group, other mercenary forces, and a conscript army to wage war against Ukraine, America, and the West.

Iran and Russia. Iran provides Russia with kamikaze suicide drones to destroy Ukraine and murder innocent Ukrainian civilians.

“Both of these heavily sanctioned pariah states depend on oil revenue to stay afloat. Global instability,” Jonah Goldberg observes, “keeps the petrodollars flowing.”

In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of 1,400 Israelis, “Russia said nothing… Putin then blamed Hamas’s atrocities on the United States,” Matthew Continetti reports.

Israel and Ukraine are different countries that face unique situations, but as far as the United States is concerned, “this is one war,” he writes.

There is more than enough evidence of a vast international effort to overturn the American-led post-World War II international system.

The rabid dogs tearing at the seams of world order are Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Holding the leash is Communist China, whose leader Xi Jinping welcomed Vladimir Putin to Beijing the day before Biden touched down in the Holy Land.

Republicans who are serious about protecting the United States, and ensuring that we win and that our enemies lose, must recognize this reality. They must recognize that stopping Iran and protecting Israel necessarily means stopping Russia and protecting Ukraine.

To give one leg of this axis of evil a pass would mean that the other leg could still stand. Both legs must be opposed and taken out; otherwise, they will continue to give succor and support to each other.

Ukraine. Populist Republicans complain that Ukraine has not historically been an American ally. This is true, but so what?

Ukraine is now an American ally because of the crucible of war and necessity. And the same was true of South Korea at the onset of the Korean War in 1950.

South Korea had never been a great or historic American ally before the Communist North Korean invasion.

Yet, in the intervening decades, South Korea has become a key American ally in Asia. And the alliance between our two countries is now more important than ever, given the growing threat posed by Communist China.

Democratization. South Korea is instructive in another way, too. For decades, it was ruled by an authoritarian regime marred by corruption. Yet, over time, it democratized and became more open, transparent, and politically pluralistic.

Ukraine today is far more of a liberal democracy than South Korea was during the Korean War; and, with American and European help, it will continue to democratize in the years and decades to come.

As for a shortage of weapons systems and munitions needed to aid both Ukraine and Israel, this, too, is a false flag.

“For the most part,” reports the New York Times, “Ukraine and Israel are fighting different kinds of wars, and have different capabilities and needs, according to current and former U.S. national security and congressional officials.”

“There’ll be very little overlap between what we’re going to be giving Israel and what we give to Ukraine,” Michael J. Morell, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said last week.

And, to the extent there is a shortage of weapons systems and munitions, this only underscores the need for a much larger and more robust American defense budget.

The United States currently spends less than three percent of its GDP on defense. “That’s only about half of the burden of defense spending that the U.S. shouldered during the final decade of the Cold War,” David Frum writes.

Finally, the fear of “World War III” from opposing Russia doesn’t make any sense. The United States, after all, opposed Russia for decades throughout the Cold War without igniting “World War III.”

In truth, appeasing Russia is more likely to ignite a larger-scale war. And while Hamas by itself may not have much military wherewithal or capability, it has to be been seen and understood as part of a larger-scale Iranian military force that is, indeed, threatening and worrisome.

The bottom line: American military aid to Ukraine is critical for precisely the same reasons that American military aid to Israel is critical: because both countries are key American allies fighting enemies of the United States, Russia and Iran, respectively.

Populist “New Right” Republicans who try to suggest otherwise just don’t get it and cannot be trusted with American national security.

Feature photo credit: Leaders of the Axis of Evil (L-R): former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and Chinese Communist Party boss Xi Jinping, courtesy of the Century Foundation.

The Moral Myopia of Populist ‘New Right’ Republican Foreign Policy

The Moral Myopia of Populist ‘New Right’ Republican Foreign Policy

By John R Guardiano on September 20, 2023

Russia’s war on Ukraine was never about a “territorial dispute” between the two countries. Instead, it is a battle between good and evil; and, in that fight, America cannot be impartial or indifferent.

One of the most fallacious, disgraceful, and repugnant assertions made by some isolationists or anti-interventionists is that, when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, both countries are morally and ethically besmirched; and so, the United States should refrain from taking sides in their “territorial dispute.”

Of course, such moral equivalence has absolutely no basis in fact. It has been cut out of whole cloth by populist “New Right” Republicans eager to have America disengage from messy and bloody overseas conflicts.

Horrific Russian War Crimes. In truth, as anyone familiar with Russian history and Vladimir Putin well knows, Russia is a criminal state that has habitually committed horrific war crimes, and this is true in Ukraine today.

Indeed, Russia deliberately and routinely launches missile strikes against Ukrainian civilian population centers, schools and hospitals; pillages Ukrainian cities and homes; rapes Ukrainian women; tortures and executes Ukrainian men; and abducts and kidnaps Ukrainian children.

And these are not scarce or isolated incidents or the work of a few bad actors who have gone rogue. Instead, these horrific war crimes are widespread and the deliberative actions of a Russian state that has long seen barbarism and criminality as necessary instruments of war and statecraft. As Rich Lowry observes:

Where the Russian military goes, war crimes are sure to follow. It is a reflection of a twisted Russian political culture that has never developed an appreciation for individual worth, democratic accountability or humanitarian norms.

Vladimir Putin is not to be confused with Lenin or Stalin—he paints his horrors on a much smaller canvas. But his cold-eyed brutality is characteristically Russian…

What the Russian lacks in planning and proficiency, it makes up in barbarity and utter disregard for humanity. War is hell, but almost all advanced nations try to keep it within some bounds of decency. Russia is an outlier. For it, the cruelty is the point—and the reflexive practice.

The Associated Press reported in April that, according to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andrea Kostin, “nearly 80,000 cases of war crimes have been registered in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.”

Ukrainian military action against Russia is in no way comparable. The Ukrainian military does not rape, torture and pillage; it does not target schools and hospitals; and it does not employ terror as a weapon of war.

Instead, the Ukrainian military fights to liberate its country and to free its people of Russian tyranny.

The worst that can be said of Ukraine is that, after a year of horrific Russian war crimes, it began to launch retaliatory drone strikes against Russian airports and military infrastructure inside Russia. But none of these drone strikes compares in intensity or firepower to the horrific missile strikes launched by Russia against Ukrainian civilian targets.

False Moral Equivalence. Yet despite the sheer moral clarity of this war and the stark differences between Russia and Ukraine, populist “New Right” Republicans have tried to draw a moral equivalence between these two countries.

In practice, this has meant seizing upon any evidence that Ukraine might be anything but a pure and perfect liberal democracy; and arguing that the war between Russia and Ukraine stems from a messy “territorial dispute” that is of little interest to the United States.

In truth, Ukraine is a fledgling liberal democracy that aspires to be part of the West, and which fundamentally shares our liberal democratic values.

And we Americans should care about Ukraine because, as the world’s most powerful and influential nation, the United States has a preeminent interest in maintaining a liberal, rules-based international order. American economic preeminence, after all, depends on international trade and commerce, especially with Europe.

Moral clarity also is an integral part of American foreign policy. Countries and people the world over know that the United States does not covet land, territory, or people. They view us as an honest broker who can be trusted, more so than any other country, to be fair and just and to do the right thing.

Our moral standing, in fact, gives us tremendous leverage and influence, militarily and diplomatically. Which is why we mustn’t squander it by trying to pretend that Ukraine and Russia are equally culpable and blameworthy; and that Russia’s war on Ukraine is of little interest to the United States.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This war is fundamentally a battle between good and evil; and in that fight, America cannot be impartial or indifferent. This is, as Ronald Reagan once said, a time for choosing.

Feature photo credit: A Ukrainian civilian population center targeted and destroyed by the Russian military, courtesy of Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters, published in The Globe and Mail.

Did the First GOP Presidential Debate Winnow the Field?

Did the First GOP Presidential Debate Winnow the Field?

By John R Guardiano on August 26, 2023

Yes, and it looks like it will come down to Haley and DeSantis vying for the right to take on the former president. Let’s hope Haley prevails.

With Donald Trump in a commanding lead for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, the big question coming out of the first GOP presidential debate is: what does it portend for the winnowing of the field?

That question is important because the assumption by political analysts all along has been that to defeat Trump, you need to winnow down the anti-Trump field to one primary challenger. Otherwise, the anti-Trump vote will splinter, thus allowing the former president to prevail with only a plurality, and not a majority, of the vote.

2016. That’s what happened in 2016, and Republicans eager to move beyond Trump are deathly worried that it might happen again this year. As New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu explains:

While it’s true that Mr. Trump has an iron grip on more than 30 percent of the electorate, the other 60 percent or so is open to moving forward with a new nominee…

In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he is consistently polling in the low 40 percent range. The floor of his support may be high, but his ceiling is low…

Mr. Trump must face a smaller field. It is only then that his path to victory shrinks…

After the results from Iowa come in, it is paramount that the field must shrink, before the New Hampshire primary, to the top three or four…

Provided the field shrinks by Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Trump loses. He will always have his die-hard base, but the majority is up for grabs

So, with that in mind, did the first 2024 GOP presidential debate winnow the field, or is it more splintered than ever?

Byron York argues persuasively that field has been winnowed from 13 candidates to at least seven candidates and, more likely, five candidates.

Winnowing the Field. For starters, he notes, four candidates—Larry Elder, Perry Johnson, Francis Suarez, and Will Hurd—did not meet the debate’s minimal qualification standards and thus were no-shows. That leaves nine candidates.

Two candidates, Gov. Doug Burgum (R-North Dakota) and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, “used funding gimmics to meet the RNC’s donor requirements, and both made little impact on the debate.

“There’s really no reason for them to continue participating in the debates,” York notes. “So that is a nine-candidate field going down to a seven-candidate field.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) may stay in the race for a while; however, it is clear that neither man can be nominated. Scott had a very weak debate performance and is not a compelling presidential candidate.

Pence had a strong debate performance, but “given Pence’s history as Trump’s vice president,” York writes, “he has no comfortable place in a race against the president he served.”

Final Five. That leaves five GOP presidential candidates: Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida), former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-South Carolina), former Gov. Chris Christie (R-New Jersey), Vivek Ramaswamy, and Trump.

Christie no doubt will leave the race in time for the anti-Trump vote to consolidate around a candidate who can deny Trump the nomination. Christie knows he is not that candidate and is committed to doing whatever it takes to defeat Trump, even if it means falling on his sword.

Vivek will not leave the race because is not running against Trump; he is running interference for Trump as the former president’s defender and blocking back.

That leaves DeSantis and Haley as the only viable candidates who can prevail against Trump. The danger is that neither of them will withdraw from the race; they will split the anti-Trump vote; and the former president will again win out with a plurality of the vote.

DeSantis won’t want to withdraw from the race because he has been the anti-Trump favorite all along, polling consistently a distant second to the former president.

DeSantis was underwhelming in the debate. His stellar record as governor, his superb management of the COVID crisis, and his fight against woke indoctrination in the schools have earned him GOP support; but he has been a weak, wooden, and uninspiring presidential candidate.

Haley, meanwhile, started out the race respectably, but did nothing to distinguish herself —until that is she literally lit it up in the debate.

“Voter interest in Nikki Haley is surging after the underdog presidential contender delivered a breakthrough performance during a combative Republican debate in Milwaukee,” write David Drucker, Audrey Fahlberg, and Steve Hayes in The Dispatch.

“We’ve raised more online in the last 24 hours than on any day since the campaign started,” says Haley’s campaign spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas.

Haley’s surge in the race is, indeed, well deserved. She would be the Republican Party’s most formidable presidential candidate against Joe Biden or Kamala Harris and is far better positioned than DeSantis to take down Trump.

She is simply a better and more compelling candidate. And the fact that she is a woman is a decided political advantage, given the GOP’s gender gap and loss of suburban women if Trump is the nominee.

But will DeSantis recognize this and bow out gracefully, thus giving Haley a one-on-one matchup against Trump?

Probably not—unless and until Haley can best him in one or more primary contests.

Conclusion. As I say, DeSantis probably has too much invested in this race to cede the nomination to Haley. As the number two candidate in the polls for many months, he no doubt feels entitled to be the party’s anti-Trump candidate.

But if GOP voters reject him and embrace Haley instead, DeSantis may have no choice but to face the music and accept defeat. We’ll know soon enough.

The Iowa Caucuses are Jan. 15; New Hampshire voters go to the polls a couple of weeks later; the Nevada Caucuses are Feb. 8; and South Carolina renders its verdict Feb. 24. Stay tuned.

Feature photo credit: YouTube video screenshots of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.